Rölvaag's avowed purpose in writing, he wrote on the flyleaf of
Længselens Baat (1921; translated as
The Boat of Longing, 1933), was to demonstrate that "It is a mistaken belief that the immigrant has no soul," and in the foreword to
The Boat of Longing he asserts that
"Types" do not interest me greatly. . . . I am interested in human beings. And there will scarcely be a life history which it would not be interesting to look at if it were singled out for scrutiny. Human portraiture has no end. It is as manifold and inexhaustible as life itself.
The opening of The Boat of Longing is an idyllic description of the author's childhood home: the island of Dønna, near the Arctic Circle. "The place lay on the sea, as far out as the coast dared push itself, and extremely far north, so far, in fact, that it penetrated the termless solitudes where utmost Light and utmost Dark hold tryst." Ole Edvart Pedersen was born in the hamlet of Rølvaag on 22 April 1876, one of seven children of Peder Benjamin Jakobsen and Ellerine Pedersdatter Vaag. Six generations of his family had lived in the fisherman's cottage where he was born, which still stands, about forty feet above sea level, in a rocky cove.
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